Tuesday, March 28, 2017

On this date, March 28, in 1762, Johnson wrote a prayer in his notebook. His wife, Elizabeth Johnson, known as Tetty, had died ten years earlier and he still mourned her. .... He begins his prayer conventionally enough: “God grant that I may from this day,” followed by such requests as “Return to my studies” and “Live temperately.” Then Johnson adds:

O God, Giver and Preserver of all life, by whose power I was created, and by whose providence I am sustained, look down upon me [with] tenderness and mercy, grant that I may not have been created to be finally destroyed, that I may not be preserved to add wickedness to wickedness; but may so repent me of my sins, and so order my life to come, that when I shall be called hence like the wife whom Thou hast taken from me, I may dye in peace and in thy favour, and be received into thine everlasting kingdom through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ thine only Son our Lord and Saviour. Amen.

Monday, March 27, 2017

...DeMille himself appeared on screen and addressed the audience. “Ladies and gentlemen, this may seem an unusual procedure, speaking to you before the picture begins,” DeMille said. “The theme of this picture is whether men ought to be ruled by God’s law or whether they are to be ruled by the whims of a dictator like Rameses. Are men the property of the state, or are they free souls under God? The same battle continues throughout the world today.” ....

...Ben Franklin made this proposal for a seal for the United States: “Moses standing on the Shore, and extending his Hand over the Sea, thereby causing the same to overwhelm Pharaoh who is sitting in an open Chariot, a Crown on his Head and a Sword in his Hand. Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Clouds reaching to Moses, to express that he acts by Command of the Deity. Motto, Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”

Franklin’s suggestion reminds us that the Haggadah’s central exhortation—that we must see ourselves as if we had been slaves in Egypt and had been guided out by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm—is not only a religious idea but also one with political and moral implications. Jonathan Sacks has noted that modernity was formed by four revolutions: the British (in 1688) and American on the one hand, and the French and Russian on the other. In Britain and America, one source of inspiration was the Hebrew Bible. Secular philosophy guided the French and Russian Revolutions. The former led to free societies, while French and Russian utopian revolutions ended in tyranny. Why, asks Sacks, did Britain and America succeed where France and Russia failed?

The explanation is surely complex but much—perhaps all—turns on how a society answers the question: who is the ultimate sovereign, God or man? ...For the British and American architects of liberty, God was the supreme power.... For the French and Russian ideologists, ultimate value lay in the state... when human beings arrogate supreme power to themselves, politics loses its sole secure defense of freedom.... Societies that exile God lead to the eclipse of man.

.... Sixty-one years after The Ten Commandments was released and went on to become the sixth-most-successful move ever made, I wonder whether we can ever again experience a culture where the American dream and my own heritage can converge....

.... The nuns rarely used "elderspeak" — a loud, slow, simple, patronizing and common form of baby talk for seniors.

Instead, Corwin reports, they told jokes, stories and blessed the sick nuns, all the while speaking to them like they were completely capable, even though their ability to communicate was significantly diminished. ....

The nuns in the infirmary suffered from dementia, Alzheimer's disease, aphasia, stroke and neurological deterioration, and all had limited or impaired communication abilities. ....

Elderspeak, often punctuated with terms of endearment like sweetie and dear, can communicate a message of incompetence to patients and can lead to a downward spiral of social isolation and cognitive decline, previous studies have shown. ....

"There's really something about the way the nuns see their older peers that I think is motivating these linguistic interactions," Corwin said. "They see these older adults, even when they're lying in bed moaning and can't move, as not being reduced by these chronic conditions but still as whole individuals."

Saturday, March 25, 2017

Today I had the opportunity to spend time with old friends — friends since high school and before. We had good times together at breakfast, church, and after, for much good conversation. We differ on some things but we remain friends.

I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival. ....
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

On June 4, 1955, C.S. Lewis wrote to Dorothy Sayers to thank her for a pamphlet and letter she had sent him. He noted, in passing, that "as always in Holy Week," he had been "re-reading [Sayers's] The Man Born to Be King. It stands up to this v. particular kind of test extremely well." We might, I think, do far worse than imitate Lewis in our own Lenten reading.

Joel D. Heck gives us "C.S. Lewis and The Man Born to be King," about a series of radio plays by Dorothy L. Sayers. I first read them in my college years. As valuable as the plays themselves are Sayers' introduction and notes explaining her dramatic choices. Excerpts from Heck's account:

My copy

In 1943, Dorothy L. Sayers’ script of twelve radio broadcasts was published by Harper & Brothers as The Man Born to Be King: A Play-Cycle on the Life of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. She had written these dramatic episodes for the radio at a time when there was no precedent for such writing. Many deemed these broadcasts sacrilegious and some even considered them wicked. Far better, it was thought, to quote the Bible than to interpret it, especially on stage. .... She wrote one Nativity story, six stories from the period of Jesus’ ministry, and five Passion plays beginning with Palm Sunday. Some characters had to be invented, such as Elihu, who was the captain of the guard at the tomb of Jesus, but Baruch the Zealot was the only main character of importance that she invented. Judas could not be a worthless villain lest Sayers cast a slur upon either the intelligence or the character of Jesus for choosing him as a disciple. Sayers uses many direct quotations from the Gospels, then adds detail to the story for the flow of the narrative. Those details certainly could have happened, but they are invented for the sake of the story. .... .... Finally, in addition to being the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, her episodes comprise “first and foremost, a story—a true story, the turning-point of history, ‘the only thing that has ever really happened’” (Sayers, 22). Especially in the post-resurrection conversations between Jesus and His disciples the message and implications of the Gospel are thoroughly explained. For Dorothy L. Sayers, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). ....

Sayers and C.S. Lewis were friends. Heck quotes CSL about their relationship: "She was the first person of importance who ever wrote me a fan letter. I liked her, originally, because she liked me; later, for the extraordinary zest and edge of her conversation—as I like a high wind. She was a friend, not an ally." Lewis approved of The Man Born to be King:

Lewis enjoyed her play cycle so much that he read the plays in the year when her book was released and then every Holy Week thereafter. In fact, his first letter to her, on May 30, 1943, contained high praise:

Dear Miss Sayers— I’ve finished The Man Born to be King and think it a complete success. (Christie the H.M. of Westminster told me that the actual performances over the air left his 2 small daughters with “open and silent mouths” for several minutes). I shed real tears (hot ones) in places: since Mauriac’s Vie de Jesus nothing has moved me so much. I’m not absolutely sure whether Judas for me “comes off”—i.e. whether I shd. have got him without your off-stage analysis. But this may be due to merely reading what was meant to be heard. He’s quite a possible conception, no doubt: I’m only uncertain of the execution. But that is the only point I’m doubtful on. I expect to read it times without number again…. Yours sincerely C.S. Lewis (Collected Letters, II, 577f)

.... The Man Born To Be King became one of the books he would recommend, along with the works of Chesterton, Charles Williams, George MacDonald, St. Augustine, George Herbert, and others, which is high praise indeed! .... [more]

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Stephen Carter is a professor of law at Yale. Here he explains the ideological rationale for campus intolerance. He calls those who refuse to permit speech they dislike "downshouters." Carter:

.... Students who try to shut down debate are not junior Nazis or proto-Stalins. If they were, I would be content to say that their antics will wind up on the proverbial ash heap of history. Alas, the downshouters represent something more insidious. They are, I am sorry to say, Marcusians. A half-century-old contagion has returned.

The German-born Herbert Marcuse was a brilliant and controversial philosopher whose writing became almost a sacred text for new-left intellectuals of the 1960s and 1970s. Nowadays, his best-known work is the essay “Repressive Tolerance.” There he sets out the argument that the downshouters are putting into practice.

For Marcuse, the fact that liberal democracies made tolerance an absolute virtue posed a problem. If society includes two groups, one powerful and one weak, then tolerating the ideas of both will mean that the voice and influence of the strong will always be greater. ....

.... The only way to build a “subversive majority,” he writes, is to refuse to give ear to those on the wrong side. ....

Opening the minds of the majority by pressing one message and burdening another “may require apparently undemocratic means.” But the forces of power are so entrenched that to do otherwise — to tolerate the intolerable — is to leave authority in the hands of those who will deny equality to the workers and to minorities. That is why tolerance, unless it discriminates, will always be repressive. ....

Today’s campus downshouters, whether they have read Marcuse or not, have plainly undertaken his project. Probably they believe that their protests will genuinely hasten a better world. They are mistaken. Their theory possesses the same weakness as his. They presume to know the truth, to know it with such certainty that they are comfortable — indeed enthusiastic — at the notion of shutting down debate on the propositions they hold dear. Marcuse, as I said, was a brilliant philosopher, but on this question he was simply wrong. My own old-fashioned view is that a “truth” that will not debate is a truth that deserves to lose. ....

.... The downshouters will go on behaving deplorably, and reminding the rest of us that the true harbinger of an authoritarian future lives not in the White House but in the groves of academe. [more]

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Yesterday afternoon and evening C-SPAN showed several panels of historians discussing the period known as Reconstruction — the term referring to the post-war occupation and "reconstruction" of the states of the defeated Confederacy. That was the period which gave freed slaves the greatest hope of achieving equal rights in this country before the mid-20th century. After 1876 Democrats regained control of southern governments, suppressed violently the right of freedmen to vote, and proceeded to pass legislation designed to segregate the races and consolidate white supremacy. All of these actions violated the post Civil War 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. Consequently cases eventually reached the Supreme Court arguing that such laws were unconstitutional. The Court did not acquit itself well. Arguably the most important case was Plessy v Ferguson (1896) testing a Louisiana law that segregated railway carriages by race. The Court upheld the state's law, ruling that separate facilities were Constitutional so long as they were equal, thus "separate but equal." That decision was the legal justification for the system of segregation that prevailed in the South for the next sixty years. The vote on the Court was eight to one. The single dissent was by Justice John Marshall Harlan. From his dissent:

.... In respect of civil rights, common to all citizens, the Constitution of the United States does not, I think, permit any public authority to know the race of those entitled to be protected in the enjoyment of such rights. .... I deny that any legislative body or judicial tribunal may have regard to the race of citizens when the civil rights of those citizens are involved. Indeed, such legislation, as that here in question, is inconsistent not only with that equality of rights which pertains to citizenship, National and State, but with the personal liberty enjoyed by every one within the United States.

...[I]n view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved. It is, therefore, to be regretted that this high tribunal, the final expositor of the fundamental law of the land, has reached the conclusion that it is competent for a State to regulate the enjoyment by citizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis of race. ....

The arbitrary separation of citizens, on the basis of race, while they are on a public highway, is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution. It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds.

If evils will result from the commingling of the two races upon public highways established for the benefit of all, they will be infinitely less than those that will surely come from state legislation regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race. We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow-citizens, our equals before the law. The thin disguise of "equal" accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead any one, nor atone for the wrong this day done.

People who know more about Constitutional law may find my opinion simple-minded but it has always seemed to me that the Brown v Board decision labored much too hard to demonstrate that separate was inherently unequal. I think they ought to have simply used Harlan's reasoning and overturned Plessy. Harlan's argument had nothing to do with social science or statistics. It had nothing to say about groups. It was about the right of each individual American citizen, without regard to race or any other category, to be treated equally before the law.

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

William Deresiewicz, socialist, atheist, college professor, "On Political Correctness" on campus. If you have the time read all of it.

.... Selective private colleges have become religious schools. The religion in question is not Methodism or Catholicism but an extreme version of the belief system of the liberal elite: the liberal professional, managerial, and creative classes, which provide a large majority of students enrolled at such places and an even larger majority of faculty and administrators who work at them. To attend those institutions is to be socialized, and not infrequently, indoctrinated into that religion. ....

What does it mean to say that these institutions are religious schools? First, that they possess a dogma, unwritten but understood by all: a set of “correct” opinions and beliefs, or at best, a narrow range within which disagreement is permitted. There is a right way to think and a right way to talk, and also a right set of things to think and talk about. Secularism is taken for granted. Environmentalism is a sacred cause. Issues of identity—principally the holy trinity of race, gender, and sexuality—occupy the center of concern. The presiding presence is Michel Foucault, with his theories of power, discourse, and the social construction of the self, who plays the same role on the left as Marx once did. The fundamental questions that a college education ought to raise—questions of individual and collective virtue, of what it means to be a good person and a good community—are understood to have been settled. The assumption, on elite college campuses, is that we are already in full possession of the moral truth. This is a religious attitude. It is certainly not a scholarly or intellectual attitude. ....

That, by the way, is why liberal students (and liberals in general) are so bad at defending their own positions. They never have to, so they never learn to. That is also why it tends to be so easy for conservatives to goad them into incoherent anger. Nothing makes you more enraged than an argument you cannot answer. But the reason to listen to people who disagree with you is not so you can learn to refute them. The reason is that you may be wrong. In fact, you are wrong: about some things and probably about a lot of things. There is zero percent chance that any one of us is 100 percent correct. That, in turn, is why freedom of expression includes the right to hear as well as speak, and why disinviting campus speakers abridges the speech rights of students as well as of the speakers themselves.

Elite private colleges are ideologically homogenous because they are socially homogeneous, or close to it. Their student populations largely come from the liberal upper and upper-middle classes, multiracial but predominantly white, with an admixture of students from poor communities of color—two demographics with broadly similar political beliefs, as evidenced by the fact that they together constitute a large proportion of the Democratic Party base. As for faculty and managerial staff, they are even more homogenous than their students, both in their social origins and in their present milieu, which tends to be composed exclusively of other liberal professionals—if not, indeed, of other liberal academics. Unlike the campus protesters of the 1960s, today’s student activists are not expressing countercultural views. They are expressing the exact views of the culture in which they find themselves (a reason that administrators prove so ready to accede to their demands). If you want to find the counterculture on today’s elite college campuses, you need to look for the conservative students.....

.... There is always something new, as my students understood, that you aren’t supposed to say. And worst of all, you often don’t find out about it until after you have said it. The term political correctness, which originated in the 1970s as a form of self-mockery among progressive college students, was a deliberately ironic invocation of Stalinism. By now we’ve lost the irony but kept the Stalinism—and it was a feature of Stalinism that you could be convicted for an act that was not a crime at the time you committed it. So you were always already guilty, or could be made to be guilty, and therefore were always controllable.

You were also always under surveillance by a cadre of what Jane Austen called, in a very different context, “voluntary spies,” and what my students called the PC police. Regimes of virtue produce informants (which really does wonders for social cohesion). They also produce authorities, often self-appointed authorities, like the writing director at Scripps who decreed that you aren’t supposed to use the word crazy. Whenever I hear that you aren’t supposed to say something, I want to know, where did this supposed descend from? Who decided, and who gave them the right to decide? And whenever I hear that a given group of students demands this or says that, I want to ask, whom exactly are we talking about: all of them, or just a few of them? Did the group choose its leaders, or did the leaders choose themselves? ....

The power of political correctness is wielded not only against the faculty, however, but also against other groups within the student body, ones who don’t belong to the ideologically privileged demographics or espouse the approved points of view: conservative students; religious students, particularly Christians; students who identify as Zionists, a category that includes a lot of Jewish students; “athletes,” meaning white male athletes; white students from red states; heterosexual cisgendered white men from anywhere at all, who represent, depending on the school, between a fifth and a third of all students. (I say this, by the way, as an atheist, a democratic socialist, a native northeasterner, a person who believes that colleges should not have sports teams in the first place—and in case it isn’t obvious by now, a card-carrying member of the liberal elite.) I haven’t heard too many people talk about creating safe spaces for Christians, or preventing micro-aggressions against conservatives, or banning hate speech against athletes, or disinviting socialists. .... [more]

The easiest and cheapest way to force people to pay attention is to be at odds with them: to be a victim, to be offended by the use of ordinary words, to insist that your toilet preferences be made a matter of federal law. To be pleasant, content, and deferential is to be unnoticed, which in the age of social media is akin to ceasing to exist for a certain sort of person.

Heterodox Academy provides "Free Inquiry on Campus: A Statement of Principles" by some Middlebury College faculty. Good to know that there are still people on that campus who believe in a liberal education. (UC Berkeley faculty?) A few of the points included in the statement:

A protest that prevents campus speakers from communicating with their audience is a coercive act.

No group of professors or students has the right to act as final arbiter of the opinions that students may entertain.

No group of professors or students has the right to determine for the entire community that a question is closed for discussion.

The purpose of college is not to make faculty or students comfortable in their opinions and prejudices.

A good education produces modesty with respect to our own intellectual powers and opinions as well as openness to considering contrary views.

All our students possess the strength, in head and in heart, to consider and evaluate challenging opinions from every quarter.

Monday, March 6, 2017

The most recent Commentary magazine includes an article by Nicholas Eberstadt, "Our Miserable 21st Century," that does, indeed, paint a very depressing picture of American society today with future prospects even more bleak. One of the subjects he writes about is the impact of opioid use, especially on men. The statistics are terrible — deaths from drug overdoses now surpass those from car accidents, suicides, and firearms. Eberstadt:

.... The opioid epidemic of pain pills and heroin that has been ravaging and shortening lives from coast to coast is a new plague for our new century. The terrifying novelty of this particular drug epidemic, of course, is that it has gone (so to speak) "mainstream" this time, effecting breakout from disadvantaged minority communities to Main Street White America. .... In Dreamland, his harrowing and magisterial account of modern America's opioid explosion, the journalist Sam Quinones notes in passing that "in one three-month period" just a few years ago, according to the Ohio Department of Health, "fully 11 percent of all Ohioans were prescribed opiates." And of course many Americans self-medicate with licit or illicit painkillers without doctors' orders.

In the fall of 2016, Alan Krueger, former chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, released a study that further refined the picture of the real existing opioid epidemic in America: According to his work, nearly half of all prime working-age male labor-force dropouts—an army now totaling roughly 7 million men—currently take pain medication on a daily basis.

We already knew from other sources (such as BLS "time use" surveys) that the overwhelming majority of the prime-age men in this un-working army generally don't "do civil society" (charitable work, religious activities, volunteering), or for that matter much in the way of child care or help for others in the home either, despite the abundance of time on their hands. Their routine, instead, typically centers on watching—watching TV DVDs, Internet, hand-held devices, etc.—and indeed watching for an average of 2,000 hours a year, as if it were a full-time job. But Krueger's study adds a poignant and immensely sad detail to this portrait of daily life in 21st-century America: In our mind's eye we can now picture many millions of un-working men in the prime of life, out of work and not looking for jobs, sitting in front of screens—stoned.

But how did so many millions of un-working men, whose incomes are limited, manage en masse to afford a constant supply of pain medication? Oxycontin is not cheap. As Dreamland carefully explains, one main mechanism today has been the welfare state: more specifically, Medicaid, Uncle Sam's means-tested health-benefits program. Here is how it works (we are with Quinones in Portsmouth, Ohio):

[The Medicaid card] pays for medicine—whatever pills a doctor deems that the insured patient needs. Among those who receive Medicaid cards are people on state welfare or on a federal disability program known as SSI... . If you could get a prescription from a willing doctor—and Portsmouth had plenty of them—Medicaid health-insurance cards paid for that prescription every month. For a three-dollar Medicaid co-pay, therefore, addicts got pills priced at thousands of dollars, with the difference paid for by U.S. and state taxpayers. A user could turn around and sell those pills, obtained for that three-dollar co-pay, for as much as ten thousand dollars on the street.

You may now wish to ask: What share of prime-working-age men these days are enrolled in Medicaid? According to the Census Bureau's SUP survey (Survey of Income and Program Participation), as of 2013, over one-fifth (21 percent) of all civilian men between 25 and 55 years of age were Medicaid beneficiaries. For prime-age people not in the labor force, the share was over half (53 percent). And for un-working Anglos (non-Hispanic white men not in the labor force) of prime working age, the share enrolled in Medicaid was 48 percent.

By the way: Of the entire un-working prime-age male Anglo population in 2013, nearly three-fifths (57 percent) were reportedly collecting disability benefits from one or more government disability program in 2013. Disability checks and means-tested benefits cannot support a lavish lifestyle. But they can offer a permanent alternative to paid employment, and for growing numbers of American men, they do. The rise of these programs has coincided with the death of work for larger and larger numbers of American men not yet of retirement age. We cannot say that these programs caused the death of work for millions upon millions of younger men: What is incontrovertible, however, is that they have financed it—just as Medicaid inadvertently helped finance America's immense and increasing appetite for opioids in our new century. .... [more]

Sunday, March 5, 2017

I've been thinking about Christian funerals recently, and especially the "celebration of the life" of the deceased in a Christian context. Obviously a funeral or memorial service for a Christian will spend some time remembering the life, the character, the faith, and the contributions — the achievements — of that person. But it seems to me that should not be the primary focus. Of course for a dead non-believer that may be all that can be said. For a believer the emphasis should be on the Hope we have.

The Book of Common Prayer has a section titled "The Order for The Burial of the Dead," and like every section of that book it rests very heavily on Scripture. The prayers are good, too. I chose readings from this section for my mother's funeral and was somewhat surprised afterwards to be complimented for the choices. I thought they would be familiar to anyone who had attended a funeral. They should be.

The service begins with these words:

I AM the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.

I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.

We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.

More, later in the service:

I WILL lift up mine eyes unto the hills; from whence cometh my help?
My help cometh even from the Lord, who hath made heaven and earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved; and he that keepeth thee will not sleep.
Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord himself is thy keeper; the Lord is thy defence upon thy right hand;
So that the sun shall not burn thee by day, neither the moon by night.
The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil; yea, it is even he that shall keep thy soul.
The Lord shall preserve thy going out, and thy coming in, from this time forth for evermore.

JESUS said, Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

I HEARD a voice from heaven, saying unto me, Write, From henceforth blessed are the dead who die in the Lord: even so saith the Spirit; for they rest from their labours.

O LORD Jesus Christ, who by thy death didst take away the sting of death; Grant unto us thy servants so to follow in faith where thou hast led the way, that we may at length fall asleep peacefully in thee, and awake up after thy likeness; through thy mercy, who livest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

I AM the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.

Thursday, March 2, 2017

.... One of the great strengths of Tolkien’s work is its grounding in history. One of the great weaknesses of the contemporary church is its detachment from its own history. Few of today’s Christians have a clear sense of how the church came to be. They know of Acts and Reformation and Billy Graham, but the rest is a blur. They do not know their forebears, the ones who faithfully proclaimed and finally handed down the faith. They have no grounding in history—their own history. ....

There are many reasons we ought to teach believers their history. History gives us purpose. History gives us hope. History gives us theological grounding. But as much as anything, history reminds us that we live in the shadow of those who have come before and that those who follow will, in turn, look back to us.

The characters in The Lord of the Rings know they are set within a wider drama that began ages prior and will continue ages hence. They are determined to act in ways that honor their forebears and leave a worthy example for their descendants. ....

We’d do well to learn from their example. We, too, need to set believers within their history. We, too, need to teach them they are small but significant players in a much wider, grander drama. They must always be aware of those who have gone before and always think of those who will follow. They do not stand alone in the story, but always in the shadow of their forebears. What Tolkien did so well is what we do so poorly.

Not Challies:

People will not look forward to posterity
who will not look backward to their ancestors.

Edmund Burke

Not to know what has been transacted in former times

is to be always a child.
If no use is made of the labors of past ages,
the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge. Marcus Tulius Cicero

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

"By the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned."

Standfast:

"I thought we had an honest man upon the Road, and therefore should have
his Company by and by."
"If you thought not amiss" said Standfast "how happy am I, but if I be not as I should, I alone must bear it."